


Asleep

by TheBrandenRose



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Character Death, One Shot, Sappy stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-18 22:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22100494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBrandenRose/pseuds/TheBrandenRose
Summary: Athis imparts a song from his childhood before his Harbinger passes into Aetherius.
Relationships: Athis/Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Asleep

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a while back when I was still active on the Skyrim Kink Meme page. Hope you all enjoy!

Athis had felled the last draugr when he heard the Harbinger call his name. It was a slow sound, as if traveling through water, and when he turned he saw her sprinting towards him with an expression of frantic terror.

He didn’t move before she collided with him; the spontaneity of her shouting had struck him with a dumbstruck paralysis. She knocked him over, falling on top of him and burying him under her. For a moment she stayed there, her face floating inches above his, her eyes wide and chest heaving. Then she twisted her body, using a hand for leverage while shooting bursts of fire behind her with the other. His eyes followed the fire: a few paces ahead, the draugr knocked an arrow, aimed…

The arrow released as a black streak. The Harbinger jerked forward.

“No!” Athis shouted, scrambling out from underneath the Harbinger before she could crumple onto him. He charged the draugr, sword tip pointed at its chest. The draugr made to block with its bow’s edge, but Athis dipped low, slicing it across the kneecaps. The draugr buckled, fell forward. Athis sent his sword through its back and twisted the blade, sending a spray of blood like ocean foam. The draugr struggled then stilled, falling back into the realm of the dead.

Athis wrenched his sword free and returned his gaze to the Harbinger. She’d inched her way towards a rubble pile in a corner not far from where they’d collided, curled into herself, two arrows protruding from her back like masts of a ship: one had been for her; the other had been meant for him.

He cast his sword aside and ran, his heart hammering, and knelt beside her.

“Fortunate aim,” she said. “Could’ve killed you.”

“And you thought you’d save me by sacrificing yourself?” he said. “That was foolish.”

She chuckled. “Yes… But also necessary.”

“Necessary? When was killing yourself necessary?”

“Are you really asking that question, Athis? I thought you respected sacrifice. Isn’t that what the Companions taught you?”

“Shield-siblings protect each other. They don’t throw themselves into an arrow’s path.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And how is that not protection?”

“But you’re the Harbinger!” he said. “Your life should come first! You shouldn’t –”

His words jammed. He couldn’t breathe. The thought of her absence, the loss of her infallible presence, had clapped a hand over his throat.

Her eyes softened, noticing his change. “Athis…” She reached out to touch him, but he turned away.

“Why?” He meant the word to be an accusation, but it came out choked.

She shook her head. “You know the answer, I think… You just don’t –”

A bout of coughing broke her sentence. She doubled up as it shuddered through her. Despite himself, the sight spurned an alarm in him. He wanted to move her close to him, to hold her through her spasms, but doing so would most likely upset her injuries. Instead he grasped her hand to bridge the space, though it wasn’t enough.

“Please,” he said, the word small and hollow. He wasn’t sure what he was begging for. He knew death was carving a gap between them, making her almost unreachable despite his touch.

When her fit was over she relaxed again, uncurling herself. Red spittle coated the line where her lips parted.

“Sing to me,” she said, her voice a dry wind.

The request caught Athis off-guard. “What should I sing?”

A short laugh escaped her before being drowned by a series of coughs. “A song… Any song. In your tongue.” She grinned, as if she were recalling a childhood memory. “It’ll be like sleeping.”

He pondered this. A song in his tongue… It was a strange request, coming from her. What songs did he know? He’d never had much time for music. The life of an urchin in Vivec never left much time to learn the songs of his ancestors. The music he knew was learned from nights in Jorrvaskr, belting out odes to Ysgramor while swinging jugs of mead. Nothing was sung of his people.

But there was one song he knew, one he’d heard the ash-sweepers in Vivec sing sometimes during shifts, a folk song about losing oneself and then being guided back again, a tribute to Azura. It was nothing like the odes sung at the temples as prayers for the sick and dying, but it would do.

After recalling the words, he swallowed, took a breath, and began to sing:

“When I hear that braying call

On the eve of nightfall,

I start to wonder, I start to ponder:

At dawn or dusk, will I go?”

He took a pause, wetting his lips. The words tasted strange, like swallowing ash. He continued:

“Before the moonbeams fade,

Before the starry blankets wane,

I often wonder, I often ponder:

At dawn or dusk, will I go?

Here I lay my head slowly

Upon the ground, lowly.

But still I wonder, still I ponder:

At dawn or dusk, will I go?”

The Harbinger’s eyes fluttered shut, her chest heaving slowly. Tears began to rim his eyes, blur his vision. Through his tears, the Harbinger looked as if she were floating in water.

“Hush, my dear, her Lady’s here,

Calling for your ear.

Her breath’s a whisper, drawing nearer:

‘At dawn and dusk, you will go.’”

He repeated the last line as a whisper: “‘At dawn and dusk, you will go.’”

She didn’t react when he stopped. Her skin was pale moonlight. “Harbinger?”

It was a subtle reaction, but he could see her eyes open to slits, watching him. Relief filled his chest, but it was short-lived; she was teetering on the edge of death.

A knot formed in his stomach. He wanted to say something to her, something about her honor and prowess in battle. But all he could think of was her eyes, her laugh. Her. He’d never hated her. All those snide comments said to her face were from a Dunmer with something to prove, and in the end she’d proven him. But any poeticism he tried to conjure died on his tongue.

In the back of his mind, though, were words that he’d been brooding over for some time. Simple words, even for him. They contrasted his life before her and his life afterwards, and he knew that saying them aloud would strike a truth that he’d repressed for the sake of pride. 

“Elisa,” he said, saying the name behind her title. Her chest barely lifted with each breath. “You made me happy.”

Her lips curved, twisted into a smile. She released a sigh, like air escaping a vent. Her lips moved, forming over the rhythm of words. He had to bend to catch them: “Go and live.”

And then she was gone, snuffed like a candle, her light gone out.

It was unexpected, her passing. Unexpected, yet still anticipated, like the pain from touching a hot kettle. But it was her words that broke him, engraving their message onto the slate of his sorrow.

Go and live…

It wasn’t the meaning of the words that pained him. It was the reason behind them. Love can break the heart. Even his.

The last of his strength unmoored. He did what he’d feared earlier and brought her body close, resting her head in the crook of his arm. And he wept. Wept for her. Wept for himself. Wept because of the pain of moving on. And when he wept all he could, he found himself standing, carrying her body like a sleeping child, and retracing his steps back outside.

He took her to her funeral pyre in Whiterun, where he watched the fire eat her body and the smoke rise like her spirit. And as he turned away from the flames her words played a cycle in his head: Go and live. Go and live.

And in the end, he did. Even through the bad times, he lived.


End file.
